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Table 26.5 Pay Scale for Macau’s Leaders and Directors

Source: The Legal Framework of Public Service (Decree 86/89/M), Appendix I, Table 3, available at the Government Printing Bureau website, http://www.imprensa.macau.gov.mo/bo/i/89/51/ declei86_cn.asp (accessed January 10, 2008); Decree 25/97, available at the Government Printing Bureau website, http://www.imprensa.macau.gov.mo/bo/i/97/25/declei25_cn.asp (accessed January 10, 2008); Stipulation on General Principle for Leaders and Directors (Law 15/2009), Appendix I, available at the Government Printing Bureau website, http:// bo.io.gov.mo/bo/i/2009/31/lei15_cn.asp (accessed September 16, 2009).

tively. Each of these subsidies is equal to a month’s salary; in other words, civil servants receive a salary for 14 months each year.

26.2.4 Personnel Management

The government’s personnel management is decentralized. Bureaus and departments are responsible for the recruitment and promotion of civil servants. Prior to 1983, there was no central agency coordinating civil servants’ affairs. The Macao government established the SAFP to reform the civil service in 1983 (Decree 42/83M). The SAFP formulates civil service policy, coordinates personnel affairs of departments, and organizes training programs for civil servants. However, individual departments manage their own personnel affairs although they are expected to abide by the relevant rules and regulations. For instance, the departments administer the recruitment and promotion examinations: they publicize the event, establish the examination committee, and conduct the examination. They seek assistance from the SAFP when necessary; for example, the SAFP may conduct psychological testing for recruitment to the security branch. Each department must also inform the SAFP of its personnel situation (detailed information is required for each civil servant, but is voluntary for non-civil servants from labor/service contracts). In other words, the SAFP maintains information on all civil servants, but it does not have complete records of workers under labor and service contracts.

Unlike many Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries, Macao has not set up an independent commission to review the civil service system. For example, the British Civil Service Commission is an independent agency that reviews the civil service system; the Civil Service Commission and Merit System Protection Board are responsible for reviewing and suggesting personnel policy for the US government (OECD 1995; OECD 1996). The

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548 Public Administration in Southeast Asia

Table 26.6 Fringe Benefits for Macao’s Civil Servants

Source: General Principle for Macau Public Servants (Decree 87/89/M), Sector 3, Chapters 2–6, and Appendix I, Table 2, available at the Government Printing Bureau website, http:// www.imprensa.macau.gov.mo/bo/i/89/51/estatuto_cn.asp (accessed January 10, 2008).

Japanese National Personnel Authority is responsible for the recruitment examinations of civil servants (Nakamura 2005). South Korea established an independent Civil Service Commission to make civil service policy in 1999 (Pan 2005, 69). The government of Hong Kong, another SAR of the PRC, inaugurated many committees to revise the civil service system in various areas (Burns 2004). Certainly, the MSAR government has also set up consultative bodies with members outside the administration for civil service reform. In 2002, the government inaugurated the Public Administration Observatory: the elite were appointed to the commission to make suggestions for reform of the civil service. In January 2008, the government abolished the Public Administration Observatory and launched a new Public Administration Reform Consultative Commission. However, MSAR has not yet institutionalized the role and function of an independent commission to revise the civil service system. For example, no agency exists to revise the salary of civil servants regularly; instead, the adjustment is rather arbitrary. In 1989, the Macao Legislative Assembly suggested an annual adjustment to the salary of civil servants in accordance

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with the inflation rate (Tang 2005, 49). However, to stabilize the administration during transition, the government increased salaries at a higher percentage than the inflation rate (see Table 26.7). In the late 1990s, the domestic economic downturn necessitated that the government froze the pay rate. In 2005, the MSAR government raised the salary of civil servants. Arguably, the adjustment compensated civil servants as they had been required to pay income tax since October 2003. The adjustments in 2007 and 2008 were due mainly to the relatively high inflation in Macao and to pressure from civil servants. Indeed, Macao has not yet established an independent commission for the regular review of the civil service.

26.3 Problems in Macao’s Bureaucracy

During the colonial era, Macao’s civil service was harshly criticized for its inefficiency and poor quality of service. The MSAR chief executive, Edmund Ho, made the following remark while conducting the Chief Executive Election in 1999:

It is no doubt that residents, tourists and foreign investors in Macau have many opinions against the efficiency of Macau’s public administration, the quality of civil servants as well as their working attitude. Indeed, the administration’s low efficiency and bureaucratic attitude have brought inconvenience to residents and hindered the economic development for a long time. (Ho 1999, 16)

Ho’s remark recalls the deep-rooted problems in the civil service that the Portuguese left behind.

The inefficiency of the civil service is partly due to the poor quality of personnel. First, many civil servants received inadequate education. Before the handover, nearly half of Macao’s civil servants received only a secondary school education or below (see Table 26.8). The lack of education may account for their poor work ethic (tardiness, insolence, and disrespect) (Lo 1995, 120; Choy 1993, 59). The Macao Civil Servant Association, a labor union of civil servants, publicly stated that the civil service has a poor attitude (Choy 1993, 59). Further, the colonial government did not conduct sufficient training to improve the quality of civil servants. The colonial government did improve the language capacity of civil servants in preparation for the handover, so that civil servants could use both Chinese and Portuguese in the MSAR era (see Table 26.9). However, the Portuguese did less to enhance the working capacity of the civil service through training. Since most colonial civil servants had the “through train” of automatic transfer to the MSAR administration, their attitude problems were simultaneously passed on to the newly established SAR administration.

The Portuguese also conducted a very slow localization of the Macao administration, causing performance problems for the MSAR administration. In the colonial government, all senior positions were occupied by Portuguese. The middle-ranking posts were fi lled by Macanese, who are hybrids of Portuguese and Chinese. Local Chinese worked at the street level inside the government (Yee 2001, 41–56). The Portuguese accelerated the localization of the civil service and promoted more local Chinese to higher ranks late in the transition. As a result, many low-ranking Chinese officials were promoted to senior positions to fi ll up the vacancies left by the Portuguese. However, many of them did not possess sufficient management experience. The MSAR government was further weakened by this cadre of inexperienced officials. For instance, the Audit Commission of the MSAR investigated the financial account and management of the Organizing

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Source: Figures between 1985 and 1988 are from Tang On Ki, “Dui Aopu Guanzhi Houqi Aomen Gongwuyuan Xinchou Zhidu de Huigu” [Revisit the Pay Scheme of Macau Civil Servants in the Portuguese Colonial Era], Aumen Yanjiu [Macau Studies], December 2005, 31(48); data for 1999 onward are from newspapers and are available from the Statistics and Census Bureau website, http://www.dsec.gov.mo/Statistic.aspx (accessed September 16, 2009).

a Figure is for the first quarter of 2009.

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Commission of the East Asian Games, which was fully funded by the MSAR government for the 2005 East Asian Games in Macao (Yu 2007, 437). The Audit Commission alleged that various malpractices by the Games’ organizer had resulted in serious over-budgeting problems. According to the Commission’s report, the overall expenditure for the Games was MOP$4.4 billion, 50.6% over the budget. Moreover, the Games’ organizer had squandered government resources. Many facilities for the Games had to be reconstructed due to defective designs. Such mistakes not only wasted government funds, but also delayed the completion of facilities. The authorities attributed the malpractice to the inexperience of officials. Indeed, the MSAR administration encountered a civil service that was inexperienced and often poorly educated and trained.

Second, bureaucratic irregularities are another source of administrative ineffectiveness and inefficiency. Corruption as well as nepotism in personnel appointments is obvious in the Macao civil service. Bureaucratic corruption had been very serious since the colonial era. There have been several corruption cases involving senior officials (Lo 1995, 171–96). Choy (1993, 59) argued that corruption had become part of the daily activity in the colonial Macao bureaucracy. Although the Macao government took various measures to control bureaucratic corruption after the handover, irregularities could not be suppressed. The Ao Man-long case demonstrated that the Macao administration was still at high risk for corruption because of the wide discretionary powers that individual officials held. Ao was the former secretary for transportation and public works who was bribed by land developers and government project contractors. During the court trials, officials who were responsible for land projects and government project tenders indicated that they were required by their superiors, who were instructed by Ao, to adjust the grading of particular bidders so that these bidders would win government contracts. As a result, the government contracted out projects with higher cost while lands were sold to developers at lower prices. Ao’s case demonstrated that authorities could easily change the criteria and grading standards without checks from other agencies. Indeed, Ao’s case illuminated the immense discretionary powers within the bureaucracy.

Macao’s personnel management is always criticized for nepotism and irregularities. In the colonial era, nepotism was prevalent in personnel appointments. As indicated above, the Portuguese appointed their friends and supporters to the government (Lo 1995, 120–27; Wu and Chen 2000, 41–42). Whenever the Portuguese appointed a new governor, he would substitute the existing officials with his own supporters. In turn, the newly appointed leaders would recruit their own friends into their divisions. Although open examination was essential for the recruitment and promotion of civil servants, the public would not be informed of the examinations. Additionally, the examinations were tailor-made for the candidates identified by the authorities. These irregularities continued in the MSAR. For instance, there were allegations that leaders from the Identification Affairs Bureau, Cultural Affairs Bureau, Labor Affairs Bureau, Finance Services Bureau, and Housing Bureau appointed their friends and relatives to senior positions (Journal Informacao, September 7, 2007, 1). In addition, the Macao prison was charged for failing to have open recruitment for clerks. Lee Kam-cheong, director of Macao prison, explained that open recruitment would involve a great deal of administrative work as well as an increase in government expenditure. Therefore, instead of using open recruitment, the department adopted internal promotions to fill vacancies (Journal Informacao, January 28, 2006, 1). The former director of the Finance Services Bureau, Carlos Fernando de Abreu Ávila, warned openly that some agency heads had recruited and promoted their friends and relatives in the civil service, and such phenomena had already altered the government administration (Journal Informacao, April 24, 2004, 1). Although civil service laws include principles for fair and open recruitment (Wu and Chen 2000, 26), there are no formal institutions to guide and regulate the bureaucracy to fulfill these principles. Lo (1995, 120–22) explained

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